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One year after graduating from the arts and business program at the University of Waterloo in 2007, Sarah McCullough decided to pursue a career in the federal public service. She moved to Ottawa to accept a position with the Public Service Commission (PSC) of Canada, an independent agency reporting to Parliament.

“There were many things that I found interesting about the public service. I was drawn to the attractive compensation, and the learning and development opportunities. Another thing I was really drawn to was the idea that I could balance my work life and personal life,” she recalls.

McCullough is now a PSC resourcing adviser. The position offers her a chance to apply her academic background (she was a French major specializing in human resources at university) in both official languages, since a key PSC mandate involves responsibility for federal government staffing. McCullough believes working in the human resources area of the federal government offers her significant career growth potential without having to change employers.

“There will be opportunities to move around to try different things,” she says.

Training and continuous learning are given high priority in the federal government, says Joanne Lalonde, the PSC’s director-general of national client services. “The public service is a continuous learning organization, so there’s a great investment in all the employees through mentoring, coaching, classroom training, as well as on-the-job training.”

The government offers a myriad of career paths for a young person, Lalonde says. “The variety is exceptional. We have over 1,000 different types of jobs across the country (requiring) all types of educational skills.”

The PSC runs several hiring programs, including a post-secondary recruitment program designed to match university and college graduates to entry-level officer positions. Recently advertised, for example, were two policy analyst-related positions with the Department of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness with starting salaries of about $50,000.

Many students get their foot in the door through hiring programs while they’re attending university. For instance, the government hires more than 9,000 students annually through its Federal Student Work Experience Program, which provides full-time students the opportunity to work in a field related to their studies. Hiring is also done through co-op and internship programs, says Lalonde.

Several provincial, territorial and municipal governments also offer co-op work programs for students. Anna Cranston, director of management career services at Dalhousie University in Halifax, says 14 students from the school are on co-op placements this winter with either the federal or Nova Scotia governments. They are working in areas such as marketing and research, updating websites, and touring the province to make presentations promoting skills training, she says.

These placements sometimes result in a public service career after graduation, adds Cranston. Once a younger person gets into the public service, “especially with the baby boom generation retiring, there’s a lot of opportunity to move upwards into middle management and then senior management roles ... if they show the right characteristics and skills.”

According to the Privy Council Office’s annual report to the Prime Minister on the Public Service of Canada for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2009, the number of federal employees who are at least 50 years of age increased from 29.1 per cent to 33.6 per cent between 2003 and 2008. Only about 23 per cent of employees were under the age of 35 in 2008.

John Gordon is national president of the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC) in Ottawa, one of the largest unions in Canada, with approximately 165,000 members, including about 130,000 in the federal public service. “We did a survey a couple of years ago, and found that about 25 per cent of our members plan to leave the public service by 2013,” he says.

The Government of Manitoba reports a similar demographic snapshot. It too has a relatively small proportion of younger employees, with about 20 per cent of its workforce currently under the age of 35, although that percentage has increased over the past three years, according to Nancy Carroll, the province’s assistant civil service commissioner. There will, however, be a “huge opportunity” to hire more young people over the near term because about 25 per cent of Manitoba’s public servants will become eligible to retire over the next five years, she adds.

Young people contemplating a public service career at all three levels of government are often keen to contribute to the welfare of society, administrators say.

In Manitoba, for instance, “we are hearing through the interview process that the work provides a lot of meaning to the applicant. People, especially our younger candidates, have talked about the fact they’ve considered both public and private employment opportunities, and that difference — to make a contribution to the community — seems to very much resonate with them,” says Carroll.

Security is often a major factor in the decision to launch a career in the public service, especially in times of economic uncertainty.

The prospect of having a secure job was high on the list of priorities for Sonya Dovale, when she began a public service career in January 2006 at age 28. Now a security bureau entitlement officer at Passport Canada’s Gatineau, Que. office, Dovale recalls having worked for several years at a blue-chip private sector company that was experiencing layoffs. As a result, “stability was a very important matter for me,” she says.

That security is buttressed by the fact government employment has increased steadily over the past few years. The number of employees within the federal public service, for instance, increased from about 183,000 on March 31, 2005, to nearly 209,000 by March 31, 2009, according to figures supplied by the PSC (which do not include numbers from employers such as the Canada Revenue Agency or Parks Canada).

There are concerns, however, that a federal government austerity program to eliminate the deficits incurred fighting the recent recession, which is reportedly scheduled to begin in 2011, might have an adverse affect on hiring over the next few years, Gordon says.

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